Natasha Ednan-Laperouse fell ill on a BA flight after eating a baguette she had bought from Pret A Manger.
Photograph: PA

British Airways’ safety training for cabin crew has been called into question at the inquest into the death of a teenager with food allergies who collapsed on one of the airline’s flights.

Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, 15, from Fulham, south-west London, was on flight BA342 from London to Nice on 17 July 2016 when she fell ill after eating a baguette she had bought from a branch of Pret A Manger at Heathrow airport’s Terminal 5. She died later that day in hospital.

The inquest, at west London coroner’s court, has heard that BA staff did not fetch an onboard defibrillator nor tell a doctor treating Natasha that there was one.

Addressing the airline’s learning and development manager, Clare Durrant, on Thursday, Sean Cummings, the assistant senior coroner for west London, said: “I am struggling a little bit with why the full range of kit wasn’t made aware to Dr [Thomas] Pearson-Jones.”

But Cummings questioned the ability of BA staff to make that judgment rather than a doctor. “That seems to me like a quantum leap in terms of judgment that your crew is being asked to make,” said the coroner. “That doesn’t seem safe to me.”

Cabin crew have told the inquest previously that because Natasha went into cardiac arrest as the plane was landing, it would have been unsafe to retrieve the defibrillator from the back of the plane, where it was stored, while Natasha was being tended to at the front.

This explanation was also called into question by Cummings on Thursday. “It doesn’t seem entirely logical to have some equipment [the medical kit] at the front of the plane and the defibrillator at the back,” he said.

Durrant said the crew would not have retrieved the device earlier, before cardiac arrest, because they were trained to wait for the agonal breath (a gasp) before fetching it.

Jeremy Hyam QC, representing Natasha’s family, responded: “The way you have explained it, the training to get the defibrillator is unsafe.” He suggested it would have been sensible to have it ready when Natasha was deteriorating.

Earlier, the court heard from Dr Alex Croom, a consultant allergist, who said the defibrillator may not have made a difference because it was unlikely there was an abnormal rhythm that needed correcting. “The heart simply wasn’t pumping,” she said.

Croom said two EpiPens that Natasha carried and that were administered on the plane by her father, Nadim Ednan-Laperouse, may have been ineffective because the needles were too short.

“The normal length for an EpiPens is 16mm and in some individuals even with a normal BMI [body mass index] … this might be insufficient for the needle to reach muscle,” she told the court.

She said some newer devices were 24mm, and she agreed with the proposition put to her by Hyam that the standard length should be 25mm, as recommended by the Resuscitation Council.

Croom also told the court that the second EpiPen may have been ineffective because Natasha’s father administered it in the same place as the first, on the teenager’s right thigh. The usual practice was to do it in alternate thighs because otherwise it could restrict blood flow and prevent the drug’s dispersal, she said.

The court has previously heard that Pearson-Jones, who was on the flight the day after graduating from Oxford University, was not told by cabin crew that the plane’s medical kit contained an EpiPen.

Croom said another EpiPen would have been expected to lead to some improvement in Natasha’s condition, but she could not say to what degree.